Release Notes

Platforms

Release 6.0 of AVS/Express is available for the following platforms:

  • Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/2000/XP
  • Compaq Tru64 UNIX 5.1
  • HP HP-UX 11
  • IBM/AIX 4.3.3
  • Red Hat Linux 6.0
  • Red Hat Linux 7.0
  • SGI IRIX 6.5 (n32 MIPS3)
  • SGI IRIX 6.5 (n64 MIPS4)
  • Solaris 7
  • Solaris 8

For more details, see System Prerequisites.

The Solaris 8 and Red Hat Linux 7.0 support are new for this release. There are now two versions of Express for Linux, and their requirements for additional software are somewhat different. Please read the Linux System Prerequisites carefully.

The documentation search feature requires a Java-enabled web browser. Note that Netscape users should have Netscape version 4.7 or greater to view the AVS/Express documentation. Linux users should note that we have found the Mozilla browser to provide font rendering superior to that of Netscape on Linux.

Development Notes

Windows

AVS/Express 6.0 and Toolmaster 7.2

It should be noted that when installing AVS/Express 6.0 and Toolmaster 7.2 on the same PC, there could be conflict with UNIDIR setting. agX reads any UNIDIR value in the registry and, if one is found, ignores the UNIDIR environment variable. Therefore, if UNIDIR is set in the registry, it will always override the parameter being passed by AVS/Express. If you experience runtime errors using agX, make sure that there are no erroneous UNIDIR values set in the registry.

Workaround for COM/ActiveX Control Generation problem

The following represents a work around to prevent AVS/Express-based ATL/COM components from crashing. The problem is that AVS/Express, within the ATL/COM control, is trying to initialize certain components of the AVS/Express UI kit. To prevent AVS/Express from doing this, simply comment out the call to UIinit in xexpress.cxx which would be a part of the control's project files.

An AVS/Express-based COM or ActiveX control should not be using any AVS/Express UI widgets. (The reason for making a control in the first place is so that you can put the AVS/Express visualization into a true PC-based application environment.)

void UI_Init(int *argc,char **argv
   #ifdef MSDOS
   , HINSTANCE *hInst, HINSTANCE *hPrevInst
   #endif
)
{
   // FIND THE FOLLOWING CALL AND COMMENT IT OUT
   //UIinit(argc,argv);
}

Solaris 8

Warning message when running an imaging application

If you use examples from the Imaging section of the Examples library or other imaging application that uses the IP kit on Solaris 8, expect a warning message about the use of the XIL interface ("WARNING: XIL OBSOLESCENCE"). We are aware that the interface has been declared obsolete.

Quick Porting Guide

The following AVS/Express modules have had name or parameter changes for this release.

AVS/Express 5 Name AVS/Express 6 Name Notes
DV.DVcopy_mesh DV.DVcopy_cells Old name now has different meaning.
DV.DVread_net_cdf NETCDF.NCread_object Old name kept for backward compatibility.
DV.DVwrite_net_cdf NETCDF.NCwrite_object Old name kept for backward compatibility.
DV.DVread_PLOT3D_mb CFD.CFDread_PLOT3D Old name kept, but parameters have changed.
MODS.Read_netCDF NETCDF.Read_Object Old name kept for backward compatibility.
MODS.Write_netCDF NETCDF.Write_Object Old name kept for backward compatibility.
MODS.Plot3d_Multi_Block CFD.Read_PLOT3D Old name kept, but parameters have changed.
MODS.volume_render same Internally reorganized

 

Issues addressed in AVS/Express 6.0

All Platforms

Illegal picking coordinates returned for uniform field in 2D view. (15482)

slice_plane parameters do not get saved properly. (21120)

Picked point of a polyhedron mesh always identical to the picked vertex (21531)

advect_multi_block, fields_to_mblock, Plot3dMultiBlock and stream_multi_block are now available in AVS/Express Visualization Edition. (21573, 21574, 21575, 21576)

Unclear error messages when help not available. (21711)

New ARR system access routines: ARRget_alloc_size and ARRget_alloc_size_total (21807)

Maximum OM parser string size increased to 8192 bytes. (22088)

Pick on georeferenced uniform field returns incorrect coordinates. (22837)

IPadd_const module incorrectly handles negative values. (22994)

isosurface IsoParam.map_component not saved properly in V file. (22996)

DVcopy_cell_data has been renamed FUNCcopy_cell_data. (23402)

Glyphs drawn for null vectors. (23685)

The default GDobject cache size has been raised from 8MB to 16MB. (23789)

DVplane_distance mistakenly skipped updating its Node_Data output when the input transform was exactly 180° different from the old transform. (23822)

data_surface_reduction execution causes application crash. (23848)

Error messages added when compiling a GEOM API project. (23870)

Verbose mode messages now identify missing parameters. (23970)

downsize module incorrectly computes indices. (24267)

ERRerror now checks entire message string for line breaks. (24355)

Output_VPS does not render very small triangles. (24465)

Data file including the data type double can now be exchanged between little endian and big endian machines without error. (25292, 25330)

AVS/Express crashed while drawing wide lines using the software renderer. (24543)

Slow postscript generation for scenes with large number of primitives. The depth-sorting portion of postscript generation has been speeded up. (24668)

Spurious error messages generated when instancing and animator module. (24726)

Incorrect cell data returned by interp_cell_data. (25147)

Error in DVcell_data_math. (25201)

A compression type parameter for write_image is not saved into V file. (9544, 9971)

Memory allocated for normals when not needed. (24326)

Crash during object picking if too many GroupObjects are chained. (25617)

AVS/Express crashes when creating AG kit legends dynamically. (25620)

ReadUCD does not set properties if there is only one material in the file. (25643)

All Unix Platforms

image_capture generates truncated MPEG movie. (17872)

UIoptionMenu widget type menu options do not always refresh correctly. Changing the type and then the class may fail to update the displayed list of types. (23419)

Placement of contents of UIscrolledWindow on Solaris changes as window is scrolled. (23517)

Echoed pictures in generated MPEG output. (23922)

AVS/Express crash when UIdialog is closed via window manager's close button. (23991)

UIfileDialog does not reflect changes to the search pattern setting. (24843)

Colors of palette for volume rendering are incorrect when using image_capture. (17135)

Color Inversion Problem in OutputImage. (13863, 14343, 14424, 14790, 15519, 15802, 16015, 21553, 21837, 21881)

Parts of UIfileDialog ignore the foreground and background colors. (25454)

Memory leak due to improper use of XtParseTranslation. (25508)

Compaq Tru64 UNIX Platforms

Floating point overflow when using ribbon. (22954)

-taso linker flag causes memory limit. (25327)

Linux Platforms

Support for 16 bit color displays. (18790)

Sun Platforms

Scripts xp_mach and xp_make updated to include s7 and s8. (23156)

SGI Platforms

Express launch script XP wasn't taking into account the environment variables LD_LIBRARY64_PATH or LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH. (25857)

Windows Platforms

DVwrite_ucd fails to distinguish ASCII from binary when opening output file. (22272)

Incorrect rendering by OpenGL. (23093, 19137)

Very large min or max values using scientific notation in UIslider cause crash/freeze. (23750)

Data in file express\MicroAVS\demo_data\building\building.fld are corrupt. (22998)

64-bit Platforms

AG kit picking code now 64-bit clean. (25327)